Transfield to the rescue on pink batts. Transfield Services is being paid a considerable sum of money by the Department of Climate Change to mop up the pink batts program, you told us. True, the Department confirms to Crikey, to the tune of about $26 million (one tipster suggested this amounted to around $300,000 per week). “However,” a spokesperson says, “the actual value will depend on the scale and scope remaining for the program as well as performance criteria.”

The rest — the timing, volume and nature of inspections and the requirement for specialist services and rectifications — is subject to “commercial in confidence provisions”. PricewaterhouseCoopers had the contract for “phase one” of the wind-up and apparently raked in a bundle. So how’s it all going? We’d love to hear from insiders…

Is Maxine McKew mounting a comeback? At least in terms of asking the tough questions, perhaps. The ejected Member for Bennelong is at Melbourne’s Town Hall next month (for the Wheeler Centre) quizzing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Thomas Friedman in a “wide-ranging conversation about America and the world”. It’s one of few post-politics forays onto the public stage, after declaring in February she wanted to concentrate on the not-for-profit sector (presumably the ABC is excluded?).

Crime watch: the cop and the little old lady. Crikey doesn’t normally concern itself with petty traffic offences, but this observation from a Canberra spy is worth recording: “I clocked the pathetic sight today of hotted-up muscle cop pursuit car built for Hume bandit scenarios — rego “Rapid1″ — busting a little old lady in an immaculate church-on-Sunday Corolla for creeping over the 40km/h limit on the seemingly eternal roadworks on Canberra’s Morsehead Drive. She was weeping and shaking with whatever mix of guilt, fear and shame such a brutish display evokes in law abiding citizenry.” Shame on them.

Busted! Crikey done for decency. Victoria’s “anti-swearing” laws have made headlines around the country, and now the “Decency Investigative Council” is after us…